The Tradition of Dissent

I had begun this introduction as an analysis of the relationship between DISSENT and the times which the articles in this volume both depict and reflect. More or less inevitably, this led to a consideration of the revival of American radicalism in the sixties, and one more essay on the gap between the generations of the Left began to emerge. It occurred to me that America could do without another such analysis—there are entire books devoted to the subject—and it was this realization which impelled me toward a rather novel form for a preface, mixing politics and memoir.

I did not choose this approach in order to be a laudator Arius acti and I hope that I am not pretentiously investing my own experience with large socio-symbolic...